HuluPlus, Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, are stuffed with classic TV series, as are online video sites like YouTube and Vimeo. But there is also a subset of streaming channels that cater to the classic TV

watcher. Some have subscription fees. Here are a few examples:

American Primetime TV – Shows include "The Invisible Man," "Robin Hood" and

If you're a classic TV fan, you probably can recite dialogue from "The Twilight Zone," "Bonanza," "The Andy Griffith Show" and "I Love Lucy." But here are some less-frequently repeated series that deserve some attention.

"The Naked City" (1958-63) – This detective series had a regular cast but focused its stories on the guest stars. The list of actors who appeared on the show is amazing: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Robert Redford, Diahann Carroll, Piper Laurie and Peter Fonda, to name a few. (MeTV, RetroTV)

"Rawhide" (1959-65) – One of the best from the era when Westerns ruled primetime. "Rawhide" gave Clint Eastwood his first major role as Rowdy Yates, the "ramrod" to trail boss Gil Favor (Eric Fleming). Fleming left the series in a dispute with producers before the final season. (MeTV, AMC)

"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (1955-62) – The celebrated film director hosted an anthology series that focused on creepy tales. Not quite as good as "The Twilight Zone," but not far off. (AntennaTV)

"Combat!" (1962-67) – A gritty drama for the time, "Combat!" followed a group of U.S. Army soldiers fighting in France. D-Day to VE Day was less than a year, but "Combat!" ran for five. (MeTV)

"Get Smart" (1965-70) – Once a rerun staple, "Get Smat" has fallen out of favor in recent years. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry and starring Don Adams, the spy spoof remains surprisingly funny for its age. (MeTV)

In the 1960s sci-fi series “Time Tunnel,” James Darren and Robert Colbert traveled into the past, but Lee Meriwether and the other scientists left behind at the tunnel’s entrance could only watch them.

Today’s TV viewers are in a similar state: Technology may not have yet developed a way to go back in time physically, but we sure can watch the days gone by.

Thanks to a number of advances, we have access to far more defunct TV series than ever. And viewers are taking advantage of the opportunity.

Sure, reruns always have been a staple of the television business. Independent channels long made their money by airing shows the major networks were done with. And as soon as cable networks sprouted up, many of them filled their time not with new programming but with reruns. In 1985, children’s channel Nickelodeon turned its evening hours into the retro Nick-At-Nite, which proved so popular that it eventually spawned TVLand, an entire channel dedicated to the classics.

But that was just the warmup for what has happened in the past few years: an explosion in retro programming that has unearthed dozens of shows previously available only to those willing to shell out for DVDs.

Two developments are largely responsible for the change.

First, in 2009 the Federal Communications Commission required all TV broadcasters to switch from analog to digital transmission. One of the lesser-known benefits of the change was that digital broadcasting allowed TV stations send out more than one signal at a time.

Suddenly, channel 2 wasn’t just channel 2, it was 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3.

It was left to broadcasters to decide what to do with that extra space on what are known as subchannels. Some aired educational programs, some news, some infomercials.

Eventually, it dawned on a few executives that the space could be used to create new broadcast networks. But what to put on them?

On Dec. 15, 2010, MeTV, a subchannel launched a few years earlier in Milwaukee, went national as a classic-TV network. A couple of weeks later, Antenna TV launched a similar concept.

Since then, the ranks have grown to include Cozi, RetroTV, This and other subchannel-riding retro nets.

The second change was the growth of services that use the Internet to deliver TV programming, and the rise of “boxes” like Roku and AppleTV that seamlessly connect the Internet to your television.

Major streaming services like HuluPlus, Netflix and Amazon Instant Video have giant reserves of old series that they serve up alongside current shows and hit movies. But net-to-TV boxes also have made it easy for tiny streaming “channels” to pop up, each capable of delivering a narrow specialty. Increasingly, that specialty is retro TV.

Join the conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful
conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments,
we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful,
threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent
or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law,
regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.